after the credits
the screen is dark but
you’re still seated
elbows touching
holding the story open
between you
after the song
the commercials roll but
your hands are still tapping 4/4 on
the steering wheel and
later the words tumble out while you stir
spaghetti sauce
and your feet tap at the table
as days are retold
with parmesan and garlic bread
after the drive
you shut the engine off but
it pings
pops
hot
water pools underneath
the exhale after
three states of air-conditioning
later you find
agates
sand
broken periwinkles
a crumpled map
the past nine months under floor mats
and wedged between seats
after your daughter laughs
a face you’ve forgotten is in her smile but
also in her dance
swagger
presence and
you try to explain how she is
your grandmother
but how can you tell her about
the cruelty and hurt and long forgetting
that all lives in
her laugh
Look: you have come from the woods
where there are ghosts
empty mines
some collapsed
others red rock ruins
stories of family who traveled into the copper heart
your children climb on the poor rock
laughing
as they keep sliding back down
they squeal at a spider
they reach for ripe berries
in the stamp mill walls and
we picnic in the rubble
and plan a ride to the sands
as if they were
a playground and not a ghostyard
and in the car later
on the radio
you hear the capital has fallen
the war is over but
in the arms reaching up
to the closed airport door
the past twenty years
are never ending
an old war morphing yet again
at night your son asks questions
he wonders who will die first
he wonders what life will be like after
he wonders at the anguish he might feel
he wonders at the emptiness of dying
you wonder, too—
like when you’re driving and there’s a wreck and
you shudder
at those left behind
but also
at the nothing you might become when it’s you who is leaving
and you wonder
will you end or
will you echo
you don’t say any of this though
to him you only say that death is scary
inevitable
he pinches his eyes shut and whispers that
these thoughts always come at night
and this is why he needs you
he swears there are ghosts here
good ghosts, you promise
he rolls his eyes
he knows it all ends but still
he wonders
how
Melissa Gibson is a faculty member in the College of Education as an Associate Professor of Educational Policy & Leadership.
Gibson says about the piece: “When my son was young, he thought about death — a lot. He taught me to see all the ways that we are all, always, wrestling with the finality (and the infinity) that is human existence.”
“Tight-Rope Walker”, Jean Louis Forain (1885).